Anyone can throw a Halloween party, but few show the commitment to curating a proper playlist for the occasion. People tend to get exceptionally belligerent on Halloween, likely to slip away from the awareness that they’re dressed in ridiculous costumes. This being the case, we must take the necessary precautions to prevent a bunch of drunken ghouls from fighting over the AUX. I’m sure they all have great taste in music, but we’re trying to stay on theme here. Spooky bangers only. I’m talking screeching strings, ominous synths, sinister lyrics. If we want to even take it a step further, we can try to arrange the playlist’s sequencing to match the narrative arc of the party.
Imagine you’re entering the house. Ideally, we want a song with a slow, foreboding opening - one for you to give a wide-eyed scan of the setting and prepare for all that’s about to transpire. You know those scenes in movies where an outsider is invited to a ‘cool kids’ party a close-up shows them looking totally dumbfounded by what they just stepped into? We’re soundtracking that.
For this effect, we’re selecting Chief Keef and Mac Miller’s “I Just Wanna.” The song builds in three increments, fostering the perfect amount of suspense. It starts with Mac mumbling over a swirl of tiptoeing keys. Then comes the thump of drums, followed by Keef crashing in like a zombie, slurring about how he just wanna “get cheese and smoke green with [his] guys.” The deranged beat and dopey subject matter make this our anthem to set off the night. Now that everyone’s warmed up, we conjure the spirit of an abandoned theme park by transitioning to the full-blown chaos of Lil Uzi Vert’s “Skir Skirr.” From there, we takeoff into a procession of off-kilter tracks. Once the crib begins to clear out and things turn sluggish, those who are left can sink into the woozy lull of Valee’s “You & Me Both” and James Blake’s "Mile High." Clams Casino's latest offering, “Rune”, will serve as the closer. It’s the kind of instrumental that evokes fog drifting across a graveyard, as a werewolf in the distance howls at the moon.
For an even more sinister line-up of songs, peep our Most Disturbing Songs Pt. II effort.